“Black shirts: bunch of slags”
We can debate what the greatest episode of television is all day, but when it comes down to it, we all know the answer is Danny Dyer on Who Do You Think You Are?
The show, where the Eastenders actor discovered that he was related to Thomas Cromwell, Edward III, William the Conqueror and Henry III, lead to him hosting a history series of his own, Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family.
Now, he has presented Danny Dyer on Harold Pinter for Sky Arts, on the Nobel Prize-winning playwright. And it does not disappoint.
A clip of the show has gone viral. While describing the East End of London in the 1930s where Pinter grew up, Dyer calls infamous British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley “a melt”.
Danny Dyer on the battle of cable street: “Oswald Mosley and his black shirts – not a boy band – but a bunch of fascist slags” pic.twitter.com/E2IJHSf92B
— Charlie Haynes (@charliehtweets) September 27, 2020
“My East End was full of love, but it sounds like young Harold [Pinter] lived with hate,” Dyer explains
He continues to explain the Battle of Cable Street where anti-fascist protestors clashed with Mosley’s followers on October 4th, 1936
“Everyone down here knows about the Cable Street riot in 1936, when Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts – not a boyband, but a bunch of fascist slags – came goosestepping down the street.”
“So here he is, Oswald Mosley, the melt,” Dyer then adds, holding up a picture of Mosley.
“So this is a big Asian community now, but back in the day, it was a big Jewish area,” Dany Dyer continues. “Us EastEnders, we won’t stand for terrorism.”
“Everybody came together and they gave the Nazis a good kicking.”
It may seem unlikely for Danny Dyer to be hosting a documentary on Harold Pinter, but the pair actually had a close relationship before the playwright’s death. Pinter took a young Dyer under his wing, and the actor appeared in several of his plays including a revival of No Man’s Land and Pinter’s final play The Homecoming.
